Protecting telecommunications equipment in telephone central offices or other locations against voltage surges and sneak currents is well known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,796,150 discloses a solid state protector for insertion in a telephone line having tip and ring conductors. The protector comprises a current unit, a voltage unit and a pair of springs assembled within a housing structure. The voltage unit includes solid state devices that respond instantaneously to spurious voltage surges on the telephone line in the tip conductor, the ring conductor, or both tip and ring conductors. When a voltage surge exceeds a predetermined threshold, the voltage device operates to ground the telephone line thereby insuring that the spurious voltage bypasses the telephone equipment in the central office.
The voltage unit disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,796,150 and similar voltage units including a voltage limiter, tip, ring and ground terminals and a plurality of diodes and metallic plates. All of these components are discrete elements which are not affixed to one another. These loose components must be assembled and maintained in a specific configuration within the voltage unit. If constant compressive force is not maintained in the assembly during manufacture of the voltage unit, the unit may fall apart and the small and fragile components may become lost or damaged, thereby requiring reassembly of the unit. With such reassembly comes attendant increases in manufacturing cost and time.
Additionally, by themselves, the voltage limiter, metallic plates, diodes and terminals possess utility separate and distinct from one another as a surge suppressor, simple conductor or diode, as the case may be. Individually, however, the several components cannot provide the sophisticated voltage surge protection of the voltage unit. Furthermore, their individual constructions are not adaptable, absent considerable modification, to other installation applications.